I’m very excited to announce yet another terrific addition to our visuals team!

Nuri Ducassi will be joining us in mid-June as Features Design Director.

Nuri is currently the Design Director at the Montreal Gazette, where she’s responsible for the overall presentation of the paper. She led a total redesign of the Gazette in 2006 and her staff to 33 SND awards over three years.

Widely recognized as one of the best designers, illustrators and teachers in the country, Nuri has an incredible track record of success at the San Jose Mercury News, Hartford Courant and Miami Herald. She has been a visiting faculty member at Northwestern University, Poynter Institute and American Press Institute. In 2006, she was an SND World’s Best judge for the 28th edition.

In taking this position, Nuri returns to her “roots” in several ways. Professionally, she will get to focus on her first love — features design. Personally, she is coming home to South Florida, where she has family and many friends. Nuri will be relocating from Quebec, along with her partner Nauret, three dogs (Barolo aka Pablit, Frederika aka Fritzi, Paco aka Puki aka Bebe) and two cats.

I expect Nuri’s talent, energy and infectious personality to make a big impact and help us elevate even further what we do on a daily basis.

Please join me in giving Nuri a warm Sun-Sentinel welcome!

By Juan Cruz Ortiz de Landázuri Infographic Director at El Mundo del Siglo XXI

It’s a new challenge for Unidad Editorial Group. Last year former Unedisa Group (El Mundo, circulation 330,000; elmundo.es, 11 million users/month; Metropoli, Magazine, El Mundo TV…) acquired Recoletos Group (Marca — the first sport newspaper in Spain by foundation and readers, circulation 300,000; marca.com, 7 million users/month-Expansión; finantial news, circulation 40,000; Telva Magazine… ) to form the biggest integrated multimedia venture in Spain.

The first step: Move everybody to a new building. Here we are now, at the building you will find three newspaper newsrooms on the same floor and several magazine teams at another plant. Crazy idea, but it works. The old building had 4,750 square meters, now we have 18,000 for smiling, jumping, crying, shouting and, of course, working too.

The second step: Integrating the newsrooms with the Internet. Yes, could you imagine a Financial News Editor managing both paper and Internet with his team in the same area? That’s happening. He is still alive and he doesn’t take drugs. That philosophy is taking all the building step by step, including Graphics, Science, Research, Photography, Culture, Local and so on.

More than 2,500 workers meet everyday inside that news monster. Everything is new, the phone numbers, the computers, the chairs, the tables and the coffee machine. There was a real qualitative jump, starting on December 5th, 2007. Nobody knows how the Systems People changed all the computers and servers in one night — if God exists, that day He was with them.

See El Mundo’s multimedia graphic to get a better idea.

Steve Wilson spoke to the Update about his natural progression from hand-drawn illustration to 3D graphics. He noted that 3D “can be a time saver for making breaking news graphics and illustrations. I don’t know how many times I have reused the same Space Shuttle model for breaking news. Also, 3D is great for making animations that can be used on the web.”

A natural progression from Frank Mina on Vimeo.

Len DeGroot and his staff at the Sun-Sentinel recently started a graphics blog. Using research materials and past graphics, Len and his staff find they can react much faster using their blog. Len spoke a little about the benefits of the blog.

Len DeGroot on Graphics Blog from Frank Mina on Vimeo.

Judges Reagan Branham, Greg Branson and Gayle Grinn look at non-daily covers during the Student SND College News Design Contest at the University of Missouri. Photo by Amanda Wilson, an MU grad student.

The College News Design Contest, co-sponsored by SND, is hosted each spring at the Missouri School of Journalism. The big day for print judging was Tuesday. Judges Gayle Grin, Greg Branson and Reagan Branham reviewed 650 entries from daily and non-daily college papers.

Check ssnd.missouri.edu throughout the day for real-time results, blogging and audio interviews with the judges.

Rob Byrd from Coastal Carolina University’s Tempo Magazine was named non-daily designer of the year. Rob Byrd wins one of the $750 travel grants to the annual SND workshop Sept. 7-9, 2008, in Las Vegas. The judges said his worked showed sparse, beautiful visual editing.

According to the SSND blog, all of the finalists except one in this category came from smaller, tabloid-shaped papers. The judges said it’s easier to do more visual, snappy design with small-format covers, and they said most of the broadsheets they saw today didn’t quite have it together for the larger format. Tight editing was another consideration- other finalists had less than five items in their portfolios, but they still showed diverse skills.

Kate LaRue, a graduate student from Missouri, was named the daily designer of the year. Her use of color, concepts and strong execution are the kinds of skills designers need to keep newspapers relevant, Grin said. “That’s the kind of thinking we need for the future is someone with concept.” LaRue and non-daily designer of the year Rob Byrd will get travel grants to the SND conference in Las Vegas.

Online entries will be judged separately by Chris Snider, Jared Novack and Ryan Thornburg. Those results will be posted April 21.

For judge bios, go to ssnd.missouri.edu and click on competition.

“The idea is to share information with readers that would normally be unused research,” Sun-Sentinel graphics editor Len DeGroot posted on the NAO boards. “We want to give them stuff they can use in their daily lives — with a visual approach. Some days, the images may be static, on others we will use interactive to explain, entertain, etc. But we want it to glide effortlessly between serious, fun and possibly even goofy.”

The S-S blog is an extension of their popular News Illustrated franchise and like others on the site it needs to get a certain amount of traffic to stay up.

PD assistant graphics editor William Neff has a different motive in launching the Plain Dealer Graphics Blog.

“At the moment it mainly serves as an in-house FTP site where other online editors can go and get posted graphics to build into their presentations,” Neff said. “However, I’ve got high hopes for the thing. I would like it to be a forum for the Plain Dealer to participate in the overall online graphics discussion.”

The editor, Richard Wallace, made it clear he didn’t want to “unsettle” readers, so it looks like other changes may follow over time. New headline and body copy fonts have been introduced as well as an extended colour palette.

The sport section looks pretty sharp and the italics give it some oomph and it just looks better. I’m wondering if the Spanish influence can be seen here as it looks similar to their sport papers (Marca etc.). I’m hoping they will change the masthead and the other furniture which is still present from the old design, as the combination of the two is slightly disjointed. But overall, it’s a big step in the right direction.

I’ve posted more pages over at the region 15 blog here

The Guardian report on it is here, and their media blogger, Roy Greenslade, comments on it here.

Alan Formby-Jackson, SND Region 15 director

Want more graphics training? Be sure to check out the infographics Quick Courses April 11-12 at University North Carolina-Chapel Hill or April 12-13 at San Francisco State University. Register here.

When last seen around these here parts, or at least the parts on 43rd Street, Charles was in the newsroom, helping to guide the paper’s design as deputy design director for news, a position that he created.

Before that, of course, he was our pioneering Graphics Editor, introducing Times readers to the kind of ambitious, authoritative and beautiful charts, maps and other kinds of graphics that are now an ingrained part of our journalism. Charles left The Times for a new challenge, at National Geographic Magazine, where he was Art Director, rebuilding the art department and attracting world-renowned visual journalists. In addition to producing scientific illustrations, maps and graphics, his staff developed and pitched stories.

He is returning to us as a columnist, but an entirely new kind of columnist a visual columnist, if you will. Charles will do his own Op-Charts, lending his formidable skills and distinct style to that form of opinion journalism. And, equally exciting, he will create a new kind of journalistic space on our website. I’d call it a blog if I were given to using that word. Charles envisions a gathering place for visual journalists, especially those who use numbers and images and charts to express opinion. It will be just the kind of “you won’t find it anywhere else” feature that ought to be on nytimes.com.

Charles will be working from the columnist zone on the 13th floor. I was devastated when he left The Times, because he was a great colleague, a great mind and a great leader. I couldn’t be happier to welcome him back.

— Andy Rosenthal

Judges are those individuals prominent and/or knowledgeable enough to sit in judgment of the competition. Thirty-two judges are needed each year.

Nominations should be sent to Susan Santoro at SusanS@snd.org . She keeps the list until Competition Committee director Marshall Matlock needs it each fall. The nomination should include the following information, if possible:

• Name (with correct spelling)

• Affiliation (you don’t have to work at a newspaper to be a judge)

• Work title

• Work address with phone number

• E-mail address

• Languages read & spoken

• Provide a few sentences why this person is qualified to be a judge (no resumes, please)

Professionals and students will team up on real-life newsroom projects in real time.

Look for blog entries and photos starting Friday.

And, it’s not too late to register for this or any other Quick Course. Check out all the training opportunities here.

From a memo from Executive Editor David Boardman:

Heidi’s new job is Deputy Managing Editor for Strategy and Product Development.

It will combine some of the most important duties of the position being vacated by Cyndi Nash and a few from Heidi’s current job as AME/Technology and Visuals. She will work most closely with me and Managing Editors Suki Dardarian and Kathy Best.

Heidi’s primary role will be as the chief liaison with other departments on the development of new content and sections, both in print and online. She will also oversee marketing for the News Department and work closely with the Research Department to help us better understand readers and non-readers.

We are delighted to announce that three top-notch visual journalists will be joining The Post:

Janet Michaud will become our features design director. She’ll be the creative partner of art directors on the fourth-floor design desk and the weekly section editors. And, of course, she’ll do lots of hands-on design, filling in for designers who are out, as well as playing a key role in special projects. Janet comes to her new role uniquely qualified to help our features sections continue to increase their value to readers through clear, content-based presentation. For the past six years, she’s been an art director at TIME magazine. At the magazine, Janet art directed an array of projects, from 30-page special cover packages to breaking news stories to the magazine’s annual Year in Pictures feature. Before coming to TIME, she was a pioneer in the newspaper design world. At the Boston Globe, Janet brought visual storytelling to the paper’s Sports section, designing pages that combined photos, text and graphics to explain the news. Her work at the Globe paved the way for more information-based design on sports pages, which is still reflected today in many papers, including our own.

Christopher Meighan will become the primary cover designer of Style’s daily sections. He’ll step into the position held by Jim Forrest, who has done the job with such grace for much of Style’s existence. Chris has been a designer at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 10 years. He began in sports, did stints designing A1 and, for the last five years, has been the primary art director of the paper’s features sections. In that role, Chris dealt simultaneously with a variety of disparate content, ranging from entertainment to science to food. This background is great preparation for Style, which demands a versatile editor who’s able to present the section’s unique mix of stories.

Susana Sanchez will join Chris on Style’s design team. She will fill a position that’s been covered with much expertise and patience by a rotating group of news editors. Now, the News Desk will be able to fully focus on a busy news year. Susie arrives from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where she was features design editor, in charge of five other designers. She also did section redesigns, illustrations and contributed to special projects. Before the Sun-Sentinel, Susie worked as a news artist for the San Gabriel Valley papers in California.

Mike Keegan / Dennis Brack

Bonia Burton, Orlando Sentinel Assistant Managing Editor for Visuals and SND Treasurer/Secretary writes in a memo released today:

“I’m sorry to announce that William Couch is leaving the Sentinel for a position at USA Today. At the nation’s newspaper, Bill will create online graphics, data-driven Flash applications and other new technologies exclusively for USAToday.com. His last day in Orlando is yet to be determined, but he will be starting work in McLean, VA on April 1st.

Bill’s time with us has been short but very sweet. He first came on our radar 18 months ago as one of 10 national finalists competing for design internships at SND’s annual workshop in Orlando. During this high-profile event, Bill distinguished himself as a media junkie well ahead of his time (see his video). His slick multimedia campaign won over the crowd and secured a coveted internship at the Arizona Republic. The Poynter Institute also took notice and offered Bill a prestigious 2007 summer fellowship. It was fresh out of that program that we snagged him for our new hybrid design & graphics team eight months ago.

While Bill never did get the benefit of that hard-won internship out west, he hit the ground running here defining a job that never existed before. Assignment No 1: our first newsroom-generated Flash graphic, an interactive map to accompany the UCF stadium opener. Determined to bring something new and useful to the report, Bill spent an entire afternoon timing the hot walk between each parking lot and the new stadium. He next teamed with Tory Hargro to tell the back story of Col. Mike McCoy through photos, videos and interactive animations. Then he really got cranking with quick-turn Flash graphics that explained how Odyssey Middle School was built on a controversial bombing range and how a deadly 70-car pileup unfolded on I-4. Up next: a rich interactive presentation on global warming’s impact on Florida’s sea levels. Bill has also regularly produced 2-D graphics for the paper and found technical shortcuts that cut production time of our TV grids in half.

We’ll miss Bill’s infectious energy, imagination and good humor. Most of all, we’ll miss the wacky noises he unconsciously makes when on the verge of a creative breakthrough. At least we still have his Twitter feed (297 followers), his Facebook page (780 friends) and Flickr albums (more than 8,000 pictures, including a set titled “Food Porn”). And there’s always something happening at WilliamCouch.com.

Please join me in wishing Bill well in his new adventure.”

Bill comments on the news on his web site.

The Blog still remembers sitting in the ramshackle offices of the Belmont Vision (THE student newspaper of Belmont University) and flipping rather breathlessly through the pages of the 13th SND annual.

It was the Gulf War annual, really, with a 30-page spread of the best war coverage to start the book.

Mixed in with the heavyweights of Dale Peskin’s Detroit News, John Goecke’s Detroit Free Press and all of those war graphics from the LA Times was one plucky little page from the Albuquerque Tribune marking the cessation of war.

“The End” in 300 point type over a 6-column photograph.

It seems like a fitting place and epitaph for a paper that always punched above its weight.

For a 10-year stretch, the Tribune could be counted on to have pages judged among the best in the industry. When you consider that the circulation was small, the newsroom even smaller and both shrank over the years, it was an impressive run that ended on February 23 after 86 years. And it was an amazing collection of talent.

Jeff Neumann, hired from a bicycle company, became one of the best illustrators and designers in the industry. Randall Roberts, who hired Neumann, spent 10 years as AME at the Tribune before moving to the Rocky Mountain News in 1998. Designer Laura Edge went on to become the managing editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Managing editor Neal Pattison, while sitting on the board as SND treasurer, helped lead a project that would win the Tribune a Pulitzer in 1994.

There were many more like designer and news editor David Carrillo, who arrived when the staff was more than 60 and saw it shrink to less than 40 before his untimely death a few years ago.

“I think everyone who worked there would agree it was the best experience of their careers,” said Roberts. “It was a wide open place where there was nothing standing in the way of doing your best work.”